The Ms. Senior America pageant was created in Atlantic City to celebrate the older ladies of America and challenge notions of beauty and its place in American culture. Photographer Brian Finke was asked by Good Housekeeping to “do his thing” and capture all the drama and glamour of the pageant in his brash and glossy style.

“I’ve photographed a lot of competitions over the years such as cheerleading competitions and bodybuilding says Brian. “I’ve alway been interested in the subtle moments backstage where the anticipation and vulnerability comes out in the contestants, they’re very telling of the personalities of the people.” Capturing contestants aged 60 – 90, a range of emotions are portrayed in glitzy colours and intimate crops, yet Brian is careful to combine stage shots with behind the scenes images to create a richer narrative.

“[The contestants] loved the attention, they are there to be seen and perform; being there shooting was just adding to the scene,” he says. Like with many of his other projects, the photographer made sure to go in with an open mind. “I always like showing up without preconceived ideas and photographing what I’m drawn to. I was very impressed watching the ladies own it on stage – I wanted them to look amazing.”

What Makes Grass Grow in The Desert is an ongoing, explorative project by photographer James Bannister aiming to reveal the cracks in Las Vegas’ facade of success and glamour. James uses photography to “expose the gap between what we would like people to see and the image that we actually project,” a gap that Diane Arbus once described as “the gap between intention and effect”. In terms of Las Vegas, James uses his camera to explore the disparity between the vision that the casino hotel owners want us to see, the sparseness of the natural environment and its poorer communities that tend to inhabit these areas.

In a loose reportage style, photographer Brian Finke has captured the art of pasta making in five different cities in Italy for gourmet food magazine Saveur. From small, family-run businesses where pasta is made in the streets to large scale, factory production, the contrasts in the series are both delicious and fascinating.

“I started my photography career when I was five,” Luca Grottoli tells It’s Nice That. However, the reason behind his exceptionally early start in the medium was due to a bike accident that meant he was stuck at home recovering. “My aunt bought me a polaroid and a Nintendo. I liked shooting the ducks in Mario bros, but my parents wouldn’t let me play for too long, that’s when I started to pay attention to the polaroid.”

Guyanese-born, London-based graduate Jamain Gordon’s interest in photography stemmed from an attraction to the arts at school. “I received my first camera (a Canon 1000f) at the age of ten,” Jamain tells It’s Nice That. “From that moment I began to capture images of people I knew and those who lived around the city where I grew up.”

Photographer Kerry Dean has shot fashion editorials for a stack of global publications and clients, among them i-D, Russian Vogue, AnOther, Nike, Preen and Christopher Raeburn, with exotic backdrops revealing a predilection for far-flung locations. A closer look at Kerry’s portfolio sees a particular fascination with Mongolia, a country she has been visiting since 2005. “I was searching for somewhere wild, open and remote; I guess it was a knee-jerk reaction, to the London life I was living, it was about getting as far away from that as possible, both geographically and metaphorically,” she tells It’s Nice That.

Truthful, emotive and highly personal, the work of photographer Tish Murtha captured the social landscape of 1980s northern England with astounding honesty. Born in South Shields, a coastal town near Newcastle Upon Tyne, Tish was the third of ten children. Her family later moved to the west end of the city, and the photographer left school at the age of 16, hopping from job to job “from selling hotdogs to working in a petrol station next to St James park,” her daughter Ella Murtha tells It’s Nice That.